Career
After training at RADA, Karlin made her stage debut for the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) in wartime shows, and subsequently appeared in repertory theatre and cabaret. She appeared in the West End in Women of Twilight (1951–52), The Bad Seed (1955), The Diary of Anne Frank (1956–57), The Egg (1957–58), Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be (1960–61), Fiddler on the Roof (1967–69), Bus Stop (1976), Torch Song Trilogy (1985-86) and Separate Tables (1993), among others.
She made her film debut in Down Among the Z Men (1952), as well as featuring in A Touch of the Sun, Room at the Top, The Millionairess, Heavens Above!, Ladies Who Do, The Small World of Sammy Lee, The Bargee, Just like a Woman, A Clockwork Orange and Mahler (by Ken Russell). In 1954, she had the part of a Martian alien in the BBC radio series Journey into Space.
In 1960, she appeared opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in the film adaptation of John Osborne's play The Entertainer. She performed in the stage version of Fiddler on the Roof at Her Majesty's Theatre, starring the Israeli actor Topol. In 1972, she appeared in the title role in Mother Courage and her Children at the Palace Theatre, Watford, in a production notable for the force of her performance, and its faithfulness to the Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt.
In television, she became known for playing the belligerent shop steward Paddy in The Rag Trade, a BBC sitcom set in a textile factory, between 1961 and 1963. Her character would take advantage of the slightest opportunity to call a strike; her trademark was blowing a whistle and shouting "Everybody out!" The show was revived by rival channel ITV in 1977.
In 1966, she appeared as a regular team member in the Australian satirical series The Mavis Bramston Show. She also appeared in the TV film Jekyll & Hyde (1990) starring Michael Caine.
Karlin performed on stage for the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, the Aldwych Theatre, and the Barbican Centre. She appeared in a national tour of 84 Charing Cross Road. In 1990, she became the first woman to play the title role in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, in a production at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff. From 1992 to 1994, she appeared as a Jewish ghost, Yetta Feldman, in the BBC sitcom So Haunt Me, alongside Tessa Peake-Jones and George Costigan.
In 2008, at the age of 83, she appeared in Stewart Permutt's Many Roads to Paradise at the Finborough Theatre in London.
